A popular way to prepare and serve onions is in the form of French fried onion rings. French fried onion rings have become so popular that they are now mechanically processed, packaged, and frozen in large quantities for use in restaurants and institutions, as well as in consumer size packages for home use.
Attempts have been made to solve the problem of increased cost due to sorting of unsuitable sizes and in subsequent processing and handling of such food products. The natural food is reduced to a chopped, powdered or other comminuted form and extruded mechanically as finely-divided products into a uniform shape. Normally, such extruded products are incapable of retaining shape and the comminuted food must be admixed with a gelling agent which, when treated, acts as a structure-forming matrix throughout the extruded shaped-food product. Such processes do not result in a fully acceptable product since the structure-forming matrix affects the texture, flavor and eating characteristics of the final food product.
Such automatic equipment is shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,537,494 wherein fresh unpeeled onions are automatically peeled and sliced, and in U.S. Pat. No. 4,534,792, wherein the onion slices are further processed by being separated into rings of a desired size. In both of these machines, residual portions of the processed onions are generally surplus. Similarly, the onion ends and the small central portions or hearts of the onions are considered surplus and of limited use.
Methods of utilizing the residual portions of the onion for various purposes are known. Generally, these consist of reducing the onion pieces (known as edible onion material), as well as chopped whole onions, to a desired size and then mixing the same with a binder to create a formable food mass. Onion rings of the desired size are then made from the food mass containing binder material.
Preferably, automatic equipment is used to form the food mass into the desired shape. Food processing equipment is known for shaping an edible material into the desired size and configuration, including various forming and extruding devices such as an apparatus described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,650,765 and 3,650,766. The instant invention provides significant advantages in apparatus, method and product over the prior art to yield binderless, shaped food material, such as surplus edible onion matter.